There is no doubt that the Samsung Galaxy S8 is one of the most widely anticipated phones that will shape the first half of 2017, and the USA and Chinese customers are getting the Snapdragon 835 version while Europe and the rest of the world is stuck with the Exynos 8895 version.

Both versions of the phone support similar "check box" features but we wanted to address a few important features. The Samsung Galaxy S8 is the second phone to have iris unlocking, and it works much better than we expected.

The first phone to support iris unlocking was the - Insert explosive joke here – Galaxy Note 7.

In early March, Fudzilla had a chance to play with a Snapdragon 835 mobile phone prototype, Snapdragon Mobile Development Platform (MDP) and we had a chance to try iris unlocking. It worked like a charm, even if you wear glasses, which is impressive.

The AT&T version of the Galaxy S8 phone ships with face unlocking or iris unlocking. It is interesting that you cannot use both, it is one or the other. Iris unlocking is more secure than face unlocking. We tried both, and we were impressed that iris unlocking was faster than we expected. Face unlocking is usually a tad faster, but less secure.

Iris unlocking takes a split of a second and of course it depends on the lightning conditions, the more light the better it works.

Iris unlocking works perfectly in daylight and evening under artificial light too. We wanted to go a step further and tried to dim the light. Dimmed light prolongs the recognition time, but it works even under any light conditions in the room. You can even use a fancy preview mask as you need to place your eyes in the designated area.

The only time when we could challenge the iris was to turn off the light completely and only rely on the light coming from a flat screen TV. It works, but needs up to 2 – 3 seconds to recognize your iris.

Iris unlocking is not expected to work well in near dark conditions, but since there is a fingerprint unlocking as well as pin/password, there are more than one option to securely access your phone.

Call us a sceptic, but most people today prefer to lock their phones and iris unlocking will grow in popularity as it solves one huge problem of a rear-facing fingerprint reader.

Iris lens unlocks so fast that we could not take even the screenshot. You can say that in a daylight scenario, it takes significantly less.

It will let you unlock your phone placed on the back just by looking at it.

Qualcomm's Sy Choundhury, Senior Director of Product Management, talked to the media audience in Hong Kong at the 4G and 5G summit about the security mechanisms and machine learning capabilities of Snapdragon processors.

He came up with a nice reference when talking about security, saying it is comparable with talking about hygiene. You don’t know where it starts and where it stops and this topic doesn’t get a lot of traffic unless one gets hacked / compromised.

Sy talked about security beyond fingerprint and predicts that eye-based security will happen with a lot of OEM devices next year.

Fingerprint sounds secure and it is good enough for most customers, but it looks like eye-based technologies will take over in more devices over the next year.

Microsoft and HP launched rather low volume Windows-based phones, first with iris-based recognition last year. On the other hand, the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 was the high volume phone that got positive reviews on iris recognition and security performance.

Unfortunately, Samsung canned the Note 7 due the battery issues but there will be more phones with iris security in the near future. Some companies chose to use the retina recognition, which is interesting as it doesn’t require any additional hardware. While iris recognition needs additional hardware that adds a few dollars to the Bill of Materials (BOM), retina scanning uses the RGB camera that you already have on your phone.

The downside is that you need a lot of computation power on both the CPU and GPU side, but since the SoCs are getting better and faster this should be a matter of software optimization to really make good use of the mobile chipsets.

Iris scanning seems to be an industry leader, and it will coexist with retina scanning, but it can take up to 4 years for both iris and retina sensors to be as widely used as fingerprint sensors are used now. Not to mention, security experts will love the fact that with iris and fingerprint sensors, you can get a two-factor authentication.

Companies like AliPay are investing a lot of money and they acquired EyeVerify, the company that was working on a retina-based verification solution. AliPay naturally works on a secured payment and as many of you know Apple Pay, along with Android Pay and Samsung Pay do rely on a fingerprint and with that authentication they do quite a good job.

Face recognition is also something that might be used by some devices and there is a lot of research about it as apparently your face has enough distinctive features to make it work reliably.

The future will bring some additional ways of security, and should be viewed as a good thing. Despite the whole fuss, most computers still use passwords, and most homes still use a physical key to unlock.

It is looking certain that Samsung phones are getting Iris security scanners.

Iris scanning technology has been a long-standing rumour with Samsung flagships even as long ago as the Galaxy S5. However nothing actually happened and it was always rumoured as being in the next model,

Now Galaxy Club spotted a tracking entry in Zauba indicates something called an IRIS CAM has been shipped from South Korea to India. This could be indicative that Samsung is already busy testing the technology in its local R&D department.

It would be reasonable to assume that it might actually be ready in the Galaxy Note 6. Of course this could be another disappointment, but at least this time there has been paperwork seen that such a device exists.

This is a huge achievement, considering that only 28W TDP Broadwell mobile processors currently support Iris 6100 graphics. The fastest of them is the Intel Core i7-5557U, and this dual-core with four threads clocked at 3.1GHz base frequency and maximum turbo frequency of 3.4GHz is the fastest Intel processor for notebooks to support Iris graphics. This is a 28W TDP processor with a configurable TDP, down to 23W.

Iris graphics 6100 are used in three additional SKUs, the Core i5 5287U, Core i5 5257U and Core i3 5157U. They are all dual-core processors with four threads and a 28W TDP.

We don’t know much about upcoming Skylake parts, so we don't know the SKUs, but Intel has communicated to its partners that Iris graphics on 15W products will be available starting with Skylake.

At the highest end, the Core i7 5650U Skylake-U based replacement will come with Iris graphics. The dual-core Core i5 5650U works at 2.2GHz and can hit 3.1GHz on turbo, all while staying in the 15W envelope.

The Core i7 5650 comes with Intel HD Graphics 6000, while the next generation Core i7, Core i5 processors with 15W will have the Iris-grade graphics. Intel will launch four Skylake Iris capable 15W processors in Q4 2015, and will follow up with an additional four in Q1 2016.

According to Intel's official data at Anandtech, the Core i7 5557U with 48 EUs at 1100 MHz can score 844.8 32b FP GFLOPs, 211.2 64b DP GFLOPS or 422.4 32b INT GFLOPs. This is not bad score, but considering that even Geforce GTX 850M with its 1198.1 Gigaflops outperforms Intel's Iris 6100, you cannot really expect that Iris Pro in 15W notebook processors will replace discrete mobile GPUs anytime soon.

Intel has already shown Fudzilla a prototype of a Core i7 NUC at CES 2015, and this 2.5-inch drive ready barebone was a pleasant surprise us and for high-end home theatre users.

Our friends at Fanless Tech have managed to get their hands on some detailed information about the upcoming core i7 NUC. The kit, called NUC NUC5i7RYH, is coming in Q2 2015 and will be based on with a 28W Core i7 5557U processor. This is a Broadwell, 5th generation Core processor, but that's not all - this time Intel's NUC will get Iris graphics too.

The dual-core i7 5557U works at 3.1GHz and with Turbo gets all the way to 3.4GHz. It has 4MB of cache and a 28W TDP. The runner up NUC NUC5i5RYH has a Core i5 5250U with 1.6GHz base clock and 2.7GHz Turbo clock, 3MB cache and 15W TDP, while the only vPro capable NUC NUC5i5MYBE works at 2.3GHz and with Turbo all the way to 2.9GHz, all at 15W TDP.

The first Iris-backed Core i7 NUC targets immersive gaming, video and photo editing market as well as home theatre enthusiast. We are not sure that Iris 6100 will be a perfect match for gamers, but the GPU will be capable of running some games. At the same time, NUC NUC5i7RYH will be a blast for a home theatre PC .

The system comes with 1 mini HDMI 1.4a, 1x mini DisplayPort 1.2 support for M.2 SATA drive cards including (22x42, 22x60 and 22x80) as well as internal SATA 3 for 2.5 inch HDD /SDD drives up to 9.5 mm thick.

Other than CPU, the motherboard supports DDR3L SODIMMs 1.35V up to 1866MHz, while the Core i5 sibling stops at 1600MHz, and the maximum remains at 16GB.

Just as with Core i3, Core i5 5th generation Core NUC systems, you will find 2x USB 3.0 at the back panel, 2x USB 3.0 at the front panel where one of them is a pass through that can charge your phone and tablet when the machine is off. If this is not enough, there are two internal USB 2.0 headers, as well as consumer infrared sensor on the front panel.

The machine comes equipped with microphone / headset 3.5 mm jack and the mini HDMI and mini DisplayPort cables can also carry 7.1 surround audio. The 1000Mbit LAN is still there, but this time Intel included a Wireless AC 7265 M.2 soldered wireless card with antennas. The card supports 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4 and Intel Wireless Display.

Intel has a new graphics driver for Haswell and Broadwell parts and it should bring a number of new features and improvements, especially for home theatre users.

According to the release notes, the new driver resolves a number of issues in Windows 8.1, as well as some Windows 7 bugs. However, the new driver does not cover Bay Trail series products used in many cheap HTPCs and mini-PCs.

In terms of new features, Intel has improved VP9 video playback through partial hardware acceleration (namely in Chrome video playback and Google Hangouts). HEVC decode, used for 4K content, was also improved, with 8-bit and 10-bit support. The driver also brings expanded OpenCL and OpenGL support.

Intel also used the opportunity to talk up new Broadwell parts, promising more battery life, up to 90 minutes in an HD video playback scenario, as well as superior performance in the GPU department, with gains of about 20%.

Not that long ago, Intel’s integrated graphics used to be a joke, but with Ivy Bridge and especially Haswell, Intel’s GPUs have become quite a bit more serious affairs, even in ULV parts. Too bad Iris is still reserved solely for flagship parts – as far as mid-range and entry-level iGPUs are concerned, AMD is still king of the hill.

Intel has revealed a few interesting specs and performance figures on its next generation Iris series GPUs, which will be used in upcoming Haswell chips.

The numbers are very impressive indeed. Intel claims the new Iris 5000 GPU will be 1.5 times fast as HD 4000 graphics used in high end Ivy Bridge parts. Better yet, the 5000 will fit the Ultrabook thermal envelope and it will appear in 15W parts. The Iris 5100 is reserved for 28W chips and it will deliver a twofold performance boost over the HD 4000.

In the 47W space, the Iris Pro 5200 should outpace the HD4000 by an even wider margin and it ends up 2.5 times faster in most scenarios. The Pro also features a bit of eDRAM integrated in the CPU package to boost performance.

With TDPs out of the equation, Iris could deliver a threefold performance gain over Ivy Bridge graphics. In the desktop space, the Iris Pro outruns the HD 4000 by a factor of 2.8-2.9. This basically means that Iris has even more potential when it’s not limited by mobile thermal envelopes.

All Iris variants support DirectX 11.1, OpenGL 4.0, 4Kx2K, OpenCL 1.2, and up to three independent displays.

However, Iris will debut in Haswell chips and it won’t come to low-end Pentiums and Celerons anytime soon. This means AMD should have no trouble maintaining its GPU performance edge in low-end and mid-range APUs.